These ideals, which have not been materialised but are cherished in the heart, should be brought out into reality. Only then can we be free. We cannot keep these peacefully inside us; we must do something with them. Either we satisfy them, or we see that they should somehow be eliminated. Some people try to kill them. “Oh, I cannot tolerate this! I must either destroy them or satisfy them.” They then do one of the two. One will find that both these things are difficult. We cannot destroy them like that. They are so intimately connected with our lives, and to kill them would be killing ourselves.

These ideals of ours are not outside us, and therefore we cannot throw them away. They are with us; they move with us, and they sleep with us. There are some peculiar conditions of mind, when people start hearing sounds in their ears, and they conclude that somebody is speaking. There is nobody there and yet some sounds are heard in their ears. Sometimes they begin to see visions and are highly disturbed. The person is so nervous because of someone talking and talking in their ears, though nobody is there, and no one is speaking. These ideals that are buried, these desires that have been suppressed and could not be expressed in life take shapes or forms, and they become visible difficulties in front of us. We are afraid of them. These are all psychopathic conditions, and this is not a healthy state of mind.

Now, according to the psychoanalytic technique, the solution was to bring out these ideals so that there may be harmony between the ideal and the real. One satisfies these desires, not materially, but psychologically at least. What is psychological satisfaction? These ideals get acted out through dreams. One may become in dream what one wants to become in waking life. Dreams, fantasies, and building castles in the air are some of the ways in which these ideals are expressed. Many a time one tries to substitute for these ideals. “When I cannot get this, I shall get something else, so that I’ll forget this completely for the time being.” But these ideas and ideals cannot be easily forgotten. Forgetting a devil is not the same as exorcising it. The devil is there, but we close our eyes and pretend it is not there—that is not a solution. We don’t see it, but it sees us.

So substitution is, therefore, not a good psychological method for clearing these avenues of the mind. Suppression is also not a good method. Suppression and repression are the causes of our illness and destruction. Substitution, again, is obviously not a solution. The desires will have to be vaporised completely, like the camphor that burns up without leaving any residue, or like the mist that melts before the rising sun. These ideals should sublimate themselves into either the reality that is in front of us, or disappear into nothingness. There is no other way left to deal with these cherished ideals.

We should attune ourselves with reality, and then we are all right. Yet, instead we to conform to society and the circumstances of the times. Whatever society says is okay with us. If we do not have ideals that differ from the rules and regulations of society, we are all right and have no tension. As time marches, we also march with it. When striding with the same speed and time as society, there is no tension. But if we are conservative, we will not change at the same pace as society; and then we will have to suffer. If we do not have the strength to change society, society will try to change us. We should either change society with our power, or adjust ourselves with it. If we cannot do either, then we become neurotic—we are going to suffer. People who want to change circumstances, but cannot, are the sufferers in the world. They say that society should not be as it is, and that it must change. But who is going to change it? Not us; we cannot do it. Then we go on complaining and suffering. Here I am reminded of a famous saying of a philosopher. “Give me the will to change what I can, the courage to bear what I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Very interesting! We do not have the wisdom to know the difference—that is our difficulty. We do not know what can be changed and what cannot be changed. We mistake the ‘cannot’ for the ‘can’. We try the impossible and then suffer—the sufferers are those who try the impossible. If it is possible, we can change it, but if we cannot change it and yet we want to, then we suffer in society. These are the simple forms of mental tension which philosophy studies in its superficial levels, and which has to lead to psychoanalytic techniques, especially today in the West.

But these conflicts do not end with merely social tension. They have deeper aspects, and these have not been studied by modern psychologists. We are not going to be happy even if society agrees with us. There will still be something in us which will remain dissatisfied. If the whole world says you are a wonderful man, you will not be happy. There are many people in the world who are placed in a good position, who are not criticised by society, but they cannot be said to be happy. We can query any one of them. A big person whom we generally regard as very important and well-placed—socially, politically and economically—if we ask him, “My dear friend, is everything all right? Are you happy?” we will see that no, he is not. What is lacking? He is perfectly in union with the existent form of society. He is well-regarded and respected, and yet something is wrong with him.

He himself may not be able to answer this question properly, because mostly people float on the surface of the mind. They cannot go deep into their minds, because their minds are merely extrovert. They think only outwardly, and cannot move the mind inward. The mind cannot think of itself. This is the difficulty with the mind. It can only think of others. The mind has become a subject of the judgement of other persons and things. It has never been able to subject itself to that self-same analysis to which it wants to subject other people and things in the world. The mind is not honest and dispassionate in its habits—it wants to judge others but not itself. Because it sees itself as the judge, why should it judge itself? The judge judges only the defendants, but not himself.

This is the fundamental difficulty of the mind. It seems to be well off with human society, but it is not yet all right. Here begins yoga, yoga philosophy and yoga psychology. Psychoanalysis is not sufficient, though mental illnesses may appear temporarily cured by the analytic techniques. People have fundamental difficulties which are not quite abnormal. A person may be normal and yet have difficulties. It is not only abnormal people that suffer in the world—normal people also suffer. The psychology of yoga starts with normalcy and not with abnormality. Abnormal people cannot become yoga students. When the mind becomes thoroughly normal, then yoga analysis starts. When there is abnormal thinking, there is no yoga. This is very important to remember. What is abnormality? According to psychoanalysis, abnormality is the tension created between individual ideals and social law. Yoga psychology, though, tells us that even if the attunement between society and the individual is achieved, the human being is not going to be happy. There is still something lacking. This lacuna, with which I began speaking, will persist in spite of our having so many things in the world. We may have perfect health and a lot of money, and we may be well-placed in society, yet we are not going to be happy with all this.

Here we enter into the field of true philosophical analysis. Yoga has a philosophical aspect and a psychological aspect and also a practical aspect, as I mentioned before. The practice and the psychology of yoga are both based on its philosophy. By ‘philosophy’ I do not mean a theory that just occurred to someone’s mind. It is not merely a viewpoint that we call ‘philosophy’. Everyone has a philosophy in that sense. Our idea of the world is our philosophy, but there is a genuine philosophy in the true sense of the term—the wisdom of life, as we may call it. Philosophy is the wisdom of life; it is not a theory. The theories may be many, but wisdom is only one. We cannot have many kinds of wisdom. Great philosophers who were genuine thinkers along these lines defined philosophy as the wisdom of life, the love of this wisdom, and, more than that, the practice of this wisdom.

To understand life in its true perspective would be true philosophy. We must understand life as it is. We should not have a wrong idea about it. When we go to a place, we must understand where we are staying and what kind of people are around us. We should not go just like a fool, without knowing anything about the circumstances prevailing outside. “Where am I, what is this country, what kind of people are living around me, and what are the conditions in which I am going to be there?” All these are the thoughts that might occur to our minds when we go to a new place. When we are in life, when we are living in this world, it must be our duty to understand what it is in which we find ourselves. “What is it that I am seeing in front of me, how am I related to these things, and what am I to do with these things? I have got to do something with them. I cannot just ignore them. Because they look at me, gaze at me, stare at me, they seem to be wanting something from me. How am I going to deal with these things that I call the world in front of me?”

Here commences philosophical analysis—the perception of the world, and our having something to do with it. We cannot simply say, “Let it be there, why should I worry?” We cannot say that about the world, as it will not tolerate that type of attitude. It will say in return, “You have something to do with me, and I shall also have dealings with you!” There is a mutual concord between the world and the individual, and here commences what we call life. Life is nothing but this relationship between the individual and the world. Our attitude in respect to the world is our life. Life is not only breathing—that is life in the purely biological sense. In the sense of values, life is more than mere breathing. This methodology of our relationship with the world is the practical business of our lives. Each one has one’s own methodology, and many of these methodologies do not succeed because they are unconnected with the facts of life. Our living should be connected with the facts of life.

When we employ wrong techniques in life—wrong in the sense that there was no proper relation to the facts of life—then we get rebuffed and receive a kick from nature. Nature responds like a policeman who tells a cabdriver, “Go back, this is not the proper road; you do not know the method of proper driving. Turn that way.” Just as we get a rebuff from a policeman on the road, nature gives us a kick. “What is the matter,” we think. ‘Why should we get a kick like this from all sides?” If we have an electric wire and we do not know how to handle it or how to touch it, it will say, “Watch out, you do not know how to handle me.” So the handling of what we call life is the practical business that seems to be there in front of us, just as in scientific or technological dealings there is a theory behind every invention, and a doctrine or a principle to be followed in every approach of life—scientific, technological, sociological or political.

The actions that the human being performs have a principle underlying them. We should not just act—there must be a method to our working. We do not go about randomly without an idea in our minds of where we are going. We should go with a definite principle in our minds. Likewise, there is a way in which we ought to conduct ourselves in life. This conduct of life, if it is going to be a success, should be based on a principle connected with the reality of life. If our ways of living are unconnected with the realities of life, one may say that life becomes a failure, and one becomes a grieved person, cursing nature. But nature is not going to listen to our curses. We can go on cursing and belabouring, but what does it care? We do not know nature, and therefore we do not understand it. The situation is like an ignorant man’s complaining against the laws of his state. He does not know the laws, and he goes on cursing everybody. “Why is it like this; why like that?”‘ A person who does not know the laws of the state may suffer due to ignorance, but ignorance of the law is no excuse—we know that very well. We cannot say, “I didn’t know.” Do not say, “I don’t know.” All people in the world seem to be in this position of, “I didn’t know, I am sorry, please excuse me.” We say this to nature also. “Excuse me, I don’t understand you properly.” But it excuses us with a kick, not with a smile—that is a peculiar law of nature.

The wisdom of life, which is philosophy, is an understanding of life. Yoga, therefore, is a philosophy upon which is constructed the most beautiful edifice of its psychology. And then there is the actual implementation of it, which one thinks is yoga and wants to study. Yoga is not merely practise without understanding. It is a practice with a tremendous understanding behind it, and when this understanding becomes complete, one becomes a perfect human being attuned not merely to sociological reality but to reality in its completeness. Yoga has many stages which I shall try to explain. Reality also has many stages, and not merely the sociological reality which psychoanalysts are concerned with. There is something deeper than the sociological and the outer reality, through all of which we have to attune ourselves systematically, stage by stage. When we attune ourselves and harmonise ourselves through all the levels of reality, we are one with nature, one with truth, and ultimately one with God. This is yoga.